On Friday, a Wal-Mart store clerk in Valley Stream, New York, was killed after throngs of “Black Friday” shoppers broke down the front doors and trampled over him as they rushed in, searching for post-Thanksgiving Day bargains. The Associated Press reports that the impatient crowd knocked the man to the ground as he opened the store at 5 AM, leaving a metal piece of the door frame hanging “like an accordion.” When told by store personnel that an employee had been killed and that everyone must leave, members of the crowd responded with: “We’ve been on line since yesterday morning,” and kept on shopping.

The annual post-Thanksgiving Day shopping ritual known as “Black Friday” starts early in many cities across America, with some retail stores opening at midnight. Black Friday got its name because, historically, this was the day when stores broke into the “black,” meaning “profitability” for the year.

Some might say that the story of the death at Wal-Mart is really the story of the connection between action and consequence, between what we do in this world and what happens. Such a view forces us to ask the question:

By what duty do we share a responsibility for the fate of others in our world?

Others might suggest that this is really the story of the consumerization of Christmas in a culture of unmet needs seduced by over-produced goods. Such a view begs a different question:

Has our moral imagination, and social imperative to heal the sick and feed the hungry, especially in this holiday season, been subverted by ego and discontent?

Regardless of the question, the tragedy at Wal-Mart presages the essential message of the coming holiday season: that the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of a life is dependent upon our behavior with our fellow man. As humans we know we are fallible and vulnerable to wrong-doing. But we are also capable of great morality and human kindness.

In the end, perhaps the greatest lesson to be learned from this story is that, in a world disfigured by catastrophe and violence, there is clearly more work to be done.